Wednesday, February 25, 2009

HOW JINDAL WILL SALVAGE HIS CAREER, IF HE HAS A CLUE

He'll do what Bill Clinton did in '88. Remember? Bill Clinton embarrassed himself by boring the crowd in his Democratic convention speech introducing Michael Dukakis. Wiping the egg off his face, he got himself booked on The Tonight Show, where he was ribbed by Johnny Carson even before he stepped out on stage (keep watching Carson's introduction -- it's brilliant):

Jindal, if he has any smarts at all, will go on Leno or Letterman or one of the other late-night shows (Jon Stewart?). But when he's introduced, he won't walk out -- Jack McBrayer will. McBrayer, of course, plays 30 Rock's Kenneth the Page, to whom Jindal is being compared by all and sundry. Hilarity ensues! And then, after a while, we'll get the real Jindal. Alternately, Jindal goes on SNL and interrupts special guest McBrayer playing Jindal. Message: I'm cool with the joke, ha ha ha!

(By the way, it must be killing the GOP that Jindal isn't being mocked for his ethnicity, but, rather, is being spoken of as a twin to a TV character whose undiluted white Protestant-ness is a running gag.)

Embracing the mockery would be the smart move. The dumb move would be to get all huffy and complain about media bias from the safety of a protective wingnut cocoon -- the post-election Palin approach, in other words. Which will he choose?

UPDATE, THURSDAY: And so it begins -- Gawker's Ryan Tate has a clip of McBrayer mocking Jindal on a test run of Jimmy Fallon's Late Night (Fallon starts hosting the show next week):

As Tate says, "Test run for SNL is more like it." The table is set for Jindal -- all he has to do is look like a good sport by showing up at McBrayer's inevitable SNL appearance and seeming to join in the merriment. Let's see if he does it.